Reasons, &c.

The great happiness of the Government of this kingdom is, that nothing can be done in order to the Legislature but what is considered by both Houses before the King's sanction be given unto it; and the greatest security to all the subjects of this kingdom is that the Houses, by their Constitution, do not only give assistance, but are mutual checks, to each other.

2. Consult the Writs of Summons to Parliament, and you will find the Lords are excluded from none of the great and arduous affairs of the kingdom, and Church of England, but are called to treat and give their counsel upon them all without exception.

3. We find no footsteps in record or history for this new claim of the House of Commons; we would see that charter or contract produced by which the Lords divested themselves of tins right, and appropriated it to the Commons with an ex- page 106 elusion of themselves; till then, we cannot consent to shake or remove foundations in the laying whereof it will not be denied that the Lords and grandees of the kingdom had the greatest hand.

4. If this right should be denied, the Lords have not a negative voice allowed them in Bills of this nature; for, if the Lords, who have the power of treating, advising, giving counsel, and applying remedies, cannot amend, abate, or refuse a Bill in part, by what consequence of reason can they enjoy a liberty to reject the whole? When the Commons shall think fit to question it, they may pretend the same grounds for it.

5. In any case of judicature, which is undoubtedly and indisputably the peculiar right and privilege of the House of Lords, if their lordships send down a Bill to the Commons for giving judgment in a legislative way, they allow and acknowledge the same right in the Commons to amend, change, and alter such Bills as the Lords have exercised in this Bill of Impositions sent up by the Commons.

6. By this new maxim of the House of Commons a hard and ignoble choice is left to the Lords, either to refuse the Crown supplies when they are most necessary, or to consent to ways and proportions of aid which neither their own judgment or interest nor the good of the Government and the people can admit.

7. If positive assertion can introduce a right, what security have the Lords that the House of Commons shall not, in other Bills (pretended to be for the general good of the Commons, whereof they will conceive themselves the fittest judges), claim the same peculiar privilege, in exclusion of any deliberation or alteration of the Lords, when they shall judge it necessary or expedient?

8. And whereas you say, This is the only poor thing which you can value yourselves upon to the King, their lordships have commanded us to tell you that they rather desire to increase than any ways to diminish the value and esteem of the House of Commons, not only with His Majesty, but with the whole kingdom; but they cannot give way that it should be raised by the undervaluing of the House of Peers, and an endeavour to render that House unuseful to the King and kingdom by the denying unto it those just powers which the Con- page 107 stitution of this Government and the law of the laud hath lodged in it for service and benefit of both.

9. You did, at the Conference, tell us that we did agree to a Book of Rates without so much as seeing it, and that never Book of Rates was read in the Lords' House, and that the said Book of Rates was signed by Sir Harbotle Grimston, then Speaker of the House of Commons, and not sent up lest the Lords' Speaker might sign it too.

The Book of Rates, instanced in by the House of Commons, was made in a way different from all former Books of Rates, and by an Assembly called without the King's writs; and winch wanted so much the authority of Parliament that the Act they made was no Act till confirmed by this Parliament; and, though the work, which happily succeeded in their hands for restoration of the ancient government of the kingdom, will ever be mentioned to their honour, yet no measure for parliamentary proceedings is to be taken from this one instance, to the prejudice of the right of the Crown in making Books of Rates, and of the Lords in having their due consideration thereof when they shall be enacted in Parliament; which was so far from being according to former usage that the Lords, considering the necessity and condition of that time, and there being no complaint, passed that Bill upon three readings in one day, without so much as a commitment, little imagining the forwardness of their zeal to the King's service in such a time would have created an argument in the future against their power; and, if the Lords never did read Books of Rates in their House, it is as true that the House of Commons do not pretend, nor did show, that ever any was read there but this.